Prevalence of junk food consumption, overweight/obesity and self-rated health and fitness in high school adolescent girls: a cross sectional study in a deprived area of Qom

Abstract

Background: Junk food intake is associated with high salt and high caloric intake and is one of the causes of overweight/obesity. Objectives: To assess the prevalence of junk food consumption in snack times and its association with obesity and overweight in high school girl students in a deprived area of Qom. Method: A cross-sectional study was done in 638 high school girls who were selected using the multistage random sampling method. Overweight/obesity was measured using body mass index (BMI) and a questionnaire was used to ascertain the daily, weekly, monthly, three monthly and occasional junk food consumption. Chi square test and t-test were used to analyse the collected data. Results: Mean age of participants was 15.77±0.73 years (range 15-18 years). The prevalence of underweight and overweight in study subjects was 23.2% and 11.4% respectively. BMI was not significantly related to some junk foods (p>0.05). Nevertheless, chocolate/soft drinks were associated _________________________________________

Impact of Fast-Food Consumption on Overweight Among Young Adults in Sri Lanka

“…Obesity/overweight was found to be positively linked to the frequency with which students consume fast food two or more times per week (AI-Otaibi & Basuny, 2015). Mohammadbeigi, et al (2019) found junk food consumption is linked to high salt and calorie intake and is one of the leading causes of overweight and obesity. This study found there was no significant association between gender and overweight/obesity.…”

“…12% were overweight male students. The study done by Mohammadbeigi et al (2019) was based on high school adolescent girls and the result was there is no association between BMI & junk food consumption. Al-Otaibi and Basuny (2015) found that overweight/obesity is associated with fast food consumption of university female students.…”

“…Obesity/overweight is strongly linked to the frequency of fast-food consumption (AI-Otaibi & Basuny, 2015). Consumption of fast food has been linked to abdominal obesity (Mohammadbeigi et al, 2019). In Sri Lanka, the middle-aged population is at a high risk of subjecting to obesity or overweight (Katulanda et al, 2010).…”

“…Goon et al (2014) said that there is an increasing trend of obesity among university students. The prevalence of fast-food consumption and overweight/obesity is high among students (Mohammadbeigi et al, 2019). A study done by Jayasinghe and De Silva (2014) showed that 54% of university students consumed fast food.…”

“…Obesity/overweight problem has become one of the major causes of NCDs (WHO, 2017). An increase in the high consumption of foods that are rich in fat, sugar, and salt is recognized as a major reason for the rise of NCDs (Mohammadbeigi et al, 2019). Fast foods occupy a prominent place among foods that are high in flour, sugar, and salt.…”